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Video s3
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    Presenter(s)
    Malte Rasch Headshot
    Display Name
    Malte Rasch
    Affiliation
    Affiliation
    IBM Research
    Country
    Abstract

    We introduce a new and first of a kind open source toolkit to simulate analog crossbar arrays ("analog tiles") in a convenient fashion from within PyTorch. Analog tiles are building blocks that can be used to extend existing network modules with analog components and compose arbitrary artificial neural networks (ANNs) using the flexibility of the PyTorch framework. They can be conveniently configured to emulate a plethora of different analog hardware characteristics and their non-idealities, such as device-to-device and cycle-to-cycle variations. Additionally, the toolkit makes it possible to design custom unit cell configurations and to use advanced analog optimization algorithms such as Tiki-Taka. Moreover, hardware-aware training features for chips that target inference acceleration only are available as well. To evaluate inference accuracy, we provide statistical programming noise and drift models calibrated on phase-change memory hardware. Our new toolkit is fully GPU accelerated and can be used to conveniently estimate the impact of material properties and non-idealities of future analog technology on the accuracy for arbitrary ANNs.

    Slides
    • A Flexible and Fast PyTorch Toolkit for Simulating Training and Inference on Analog Crossbar Arrays (application/pdf)